As a Gauge Of Social Change, Behold: The Breast

By SARAH BOXER

Published: May 22, 1999

One way of looking at breasts -- other than head on, from underneath or in profile -- is to see them as public property. They never fully belong to the women who live with them. They arrive as uninvited buds and slowly blossom into a social concern.

As Francine Prose points out in the book ''Master Breasts,'' they are ''a body part that we didn't start out with . . . whole new organs, two of them, tricky to hide or eradicate, attached for all the world to see . . . twin messengers announcing our lack of control, announcing that Nature has plans for us about which we were not consulted.''

As if the breast has not had its share of shelf space, two new breast books have arrived. ''Master Breasts'' presents breast photographs with text by Ms. Prose, Karen Finley, Dario Fo and Charles Simic. ''At the Breast'' by Linda M. Blum, a sociologist, is about the history and ideology of American breast-feeding.

The history of the maternal breast can be viewed as a long-running property dispute. Who has a stake? It's not just women and children.

When the country was founded, American breasts worked for the new nation. Breast-feeding, Ms. Blum writes, ''became almost an emblem of new democratic ideals, as images of 'nature' were linked with equality, the rejection of decadent, aristocratic 'culture.' '' While European mothers often used wet nurses, American mothers were encouraged to breast-feed their own.

In the 19th century, slavery altered the picture. About 20 percent of white plantation mothers used black wet nurses, who were seen as ''naturally'' nurturing. By the early 20th century, though, maternal breasts had become ''the conduit to national strength and global power,'' Ms. Blum writes. The Government, seeking to promote the ''purity'' of the largely Anglo-Saxon population, encouraged women (especially white women) to stay home with their children and put their breasts to work.

In the 1930's, science stepped in. Doctors advised mothers to weigh their babies before and after nursing to see how well their breasts performed. Pediatric research, ''funded by formula producers,'' Ms. Blum writes, indicated that breast milk was insufficiently nutritious and that formula was a necessary supplement.

By mid-century, as breast-feeding declined, psychiatrists staked a claim. John Bowlby, the founder of attachment theory, said that ''any separation of the young child from its mother would result in psychic damage,'' Ms. Blum says. D. W. Winnicott, a psychoanalyst, said breast-feeding was important to the baby's sense of ''omnipotence'' over reality and the mother. Dr. Benjamin Spock recommended breast-feeding, too.

But breast-feeding continued to decline in the 1950's and 60's. It seems that babies' claims conflicted with those of men. Breast-feeding ''seemed to violate husbands' ownership of their wives breasts,'' Ms. Blum writes. Dr. Spock wrote about unshapely breasts and husbands jealous of their suckling babies. Penelope Leach wrote more pointedly: ''Your body is ready and waiting for him. Your skin thrills to his.'' By him, Ms. Blum observes, Ms. Leach meant ''the baby.''

The tide did not turn until the 1970's, when hippies initiated a ''back-to-the-breast movement.''

Finally, in the 1980's and 90's, as the immunological advantages of breast milk were demonstrated, breasts became part of the humming economy. Many mothers returned to work with the guilty realization that they owed their children their breast milk, even if they couldn't dispense it directly. Breast pumps proliferated. Ads showed mothers cradling their pumps like babies. Breast milk became, as the psychoanalyst Michelle Friedman observed, a ''fetish.''

So what happens to the public breast, drained of milk and sentiment? ''Master Breasts'' is a partial answer. The book is full of photographs of breasts loaded with irony: Ralph Bartholomew's Playtex woman ascending a staircase; Annie Sprinkle's ''Bosom Ballet''; Duane Michals's portrait of Louise Bourgeois in a dress of breasts and phalluses; Sally Mann's daughter sporting small plastic dolls as breasts.

In a poem in ''Master Breasts,'' Ms. Finley imagines James Bond's testicles squeezed together and wrapped in lacy cups. But she's too late. The reverse has already occurred. Breasts today are what phalluses were for the Greeks: strange fruits ripe for parody.